https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X59cgXHh_nc
If you believe that, youāll believe anything! 
Itās better to keep your mouth shut and appear a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt.
Iām enjoying a pot of Singbulli second picking (a Darjeeling), made the old fashioned way.
Is it supposed to be satire? I didnāt get that ā¦
Howās that, chas?
If youāre referring to the tea, itās a wonderful light Darjeeling. The liquor is pale and almost naturally sweet.
If you mean, how do I make the tea, loose in a pot, boiling water, covered, steeped 2-3 minutes for a Darjeeling.
Thatās the one I meant.
Yes, I do appreciate a nice Darjeeling. My middle son is very keen on various teas, and has become quite expert at them. He would tell you never to use boiling water. In fact, he generally boils the kettle and then waits for a minute or two. Heās fairly precise as to how long he leaves the tea to infuse before serving the first cup as well. I havenāt quite figured out why yet. Iām seeing him this weekend for a socially distanced visit. Iāll ask him then.
I let the water cool a bit for green tea. If itās a darker green, I rinse it with a bit of sub-boiling water, too. I got that trick from a Taiwanese friend whose uncle had a tea plantation. It makes a huge difference; Iād never liked green tea before I met him. Itās not necessary for Japanese teas, but does wonders for green Chinese teas.
I prefer the extra edge of boiling water for black teas, though.
Interesting. Actually, very interesting. 1980. And produced in order to standardise the method of preparation so as to make sensory tests comparable. Theyāre not saying that this is the proper way to make tea. But maybe to some extent it reflects the cultural norms of the times.
Itās such a broad subject, in fact. I only really realised that after I had posted my OP. Youāve got what may be regarded as ātraditional, British teaā, the modern variant on that, which I suppose you could characterise as ātraditional British tea made with a tea bagā, various traditional oriental teas and tea-making methods ā¦ there must be more that I havenāt thought of, but the oriental methods themselves constitute a pretty broad subject.
By the way, by this stage, British twitter has gone completely nuts over the video I posted at the top of the thread. One called it, āan outrage and a cultural assault on our British way of lifeā. I actually think he wasnāt joking ā¦
285 mL is a LARGE pot of tea? Thatās what we 'Mercans call a mug. 240 mL is a small pot? I would have thought a pot was larger than a (tea) cup. Although they call this a standards document, Iāll note that NPL (National Physical Laboratory, the UKās national metrology/standards institute) was not involved. I would think a large pot should be at least four (tea) cups, or 600 mL.
Even though Iām a Yank, I can see where that person is coming from. Iāve known how to make a proper pot since I was in grade school. But then, you may have picked up, Iām an absolute tea geek. Well, a complete geek as you can tell from the paragraph above.
I think tomorrow morning will be chai (I have a talk at a geek conference later in the morning [online this year of course], so I wanna be in a good frame of mind). My recipe is 4:2:1 cardamom:cinnamon:ginger, plus 5 grinds of black pepper slowly heated in the water; Assam steeped 4-5 minutes, and whole/full-fat milk. I know, I should heat the milk and water together, but I prefer it this way not the least because I can make more in a batch. I sometimes replace the ginger with cloves; that makes it spicier; the ginger makes it creamier.
I spent several months ruining my knees learning a slightly different way of making tea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfDTuNyup9Y 
Bob
Good Lord. There comes a limit even for a barbarian such as myself, and my tea sins are many (I wonāt list them, for I fear the flames). Not that theyāre born of ignorance: Iām simply a savage who knows how to do the right thing, but can easily switch gears when nobodyās looking - sort of like sitting at the computer in your undies. Now, Iāll begin with a disclaimer and admit that I have little problem with nuking a mug of water and dropping a tea bag in it, but thatās where any similarity ends: everything else about that vid is totally unacceptable in my world.
Every time I hear the term āinfluencerā I cringe, and that woman is a prime example of why. She also gets a special spot in Hell for dragging her poor daughter into the offense.
When it comes to freshly-brewed tea, Iām a purist: no sugar, no lemon, and definitely no milk. Iāve given the milk thing a number of tries, but I just canāt go there. I donāt get the appeal; for me, milk ruins a perfectly good cup of tea. I never even owned one of those little wee creamer pitchers until I started gigging with a couple of Scots; hospitality required one for the times when weād meet at my place. After all, milk straight out of a gallon jug is hard to manage, never mind being just crass. And Iām pleased to report that this Yank got compliments, along with with some surprise, at his ability to make a pot of āproper Scottish teaā. Whatever that is. I just brew it, and Devil take the hindmost. Maybe thatās the secret.
Iāve had to give up coffee ( 
) but I still keep two kinds of tea on hand, mainly in case guests drop in: Japanese green sencha (because brewing it doesnāt require nearly as much coddling as gyokuro), and something black but respectable. Right now itās Scottish Breakfast, which I like as well as any other. The former is loose, the latter in bags of the same size as in the benighted video. Loose or bags, it doesnāt matter too much to me. Well, I probably wouldnāt buy bagged sencha unless there was no choice, but there you go.
Probably not, but thatās being way too sensitive. It would be quite sufficient to call the tea woman an oaf and a boor, and she should stop cluttering the bandwidth with her pig-ignorance and pawning it off as āknowledgeā. Anyone not living under a rock would know that no Brit would make tea even remotely that way. Thereās a Chinese saying: selling dog meat and calling it mutton.
There are plenty of Japanese whoād disagree with you on that, but best practice will depend on the tea; some, notably the expensive ones, require more care with water temperature and timing, otherwise the teaās considered abused and therefore wasted. But I do think that sencha (the household go-to) stands up to more casual treatment. Still, with tea, my palateās not that sensitive, so what I brew might be unpleasant to someone else. Havenāt had anyone complain yet, though.
Iāve never heard of rinsing Japanese green teas. For example, if you rinse tea with matcha, youāll rinse the matcha away. Of course that wonāt happen with sencha, but Iāve still never heard of rinsing sencha.
If it wasnāt clear that the bold was referring to rinsing, my humble apologies.
Oh, I see! I got a lot of wires crossed, there; I can see now that I didnāt read as closely as I should have. Iād never heard of rinsing tea leaves prior to brewing before, so it went right over my head, and I automatically assumed you meant the practice of priming the teapot with hot water. Consequently my mistaken reading was compounded, for the part I bolded struck me as meaning that water temperature wasnāt an issue with Japanese teas.
It would appear that I should be the one offering apologies, not you.
Hmm. Did I miss something? It seems to me it would be impossible to Ā“rinseĀ“ matcha, as it is no longer in leaf form, but is a ground powder waiting for its role in chanoyu to be whisked. . .
In China, the name Ā“Iron GoddessĀ“ (Tieguanyin) is much abused, but if you are paying something approaching thirty dollars a pound, you are either getting royally ripped off, or getting the real deal. With the myriad forms of Iron Goddess teas, and the thousands of opinions about how to prepare and drink it, you have endless rabbit holes to go down. According to Red Pine, You2Song1, (Bill Porter), poet and translator, travelling across China today with a tin of good Iron Goddess will at least get you an overnight accommodation at any monastery you might come upon.
Thatās exactly what chas was saying, in reference to how I had misunderstood his meaning.